February 2005

The winter of 2005, famous beatboxer Rahzel came to my school, and he could not find an opener for his performance in the grand auditorium. So instead of a traditional opening act, there was an open freestyle competition, the winner of which would receive… well, something. And one of my buddies at the time, “SurfGangsta” was planning to enter. He entered as a complete joke, but since the contest was based on crowd reaction, and he had over 15 loud-ass dudes there to support him, he would finish in second place. Don’t you love college?

Rather reluctantly, I showed up at this event with the sole purpose of watching SurfGangsta make a complete fool of himself. But as soon as I walked in, I heard a loud “Scottydukes!”. His friend “RollerKingdom” was there, with his entire posse, “The RollerKingdom Crew”. Everywhere this kid rolled, he was 15 deep with a crowd of the most rowdy, out of control college motherfuckers. To their credit, these kids were, and still are, some of my only real fans. But they would have a tendency to put me in embarrasing situations based on peer pressure. Tonight was no exception

“Scotty, you are going up there”, RollerKingdom told me. My rebuttal was “But dude, I’m not here to perform. I’m just watching. I have nothing…” Which led to a round of boos and shouts of “Pussy” from the whole crew. “Oh no Scottydukes, you ARE going up there” RollerKingdom replied. “We already signed you up”. “WHAT? Are you fucking kidding me man?” I immediately ran to the student programming council and demanded to see the sign-up list. Much to my dismay, he was not kidding. And it was 5 minutes till showtime, too late to cancel.

So ten minutes later, with absolutely no idea of what I was doing or saying, I was onstage in front of maybe 700 people. This is how the contest worked. The first round would be every contestant alone in front of the crowd for a minute. The rest of the rounds would be a straight battle. Before this, I had not freestyled or rhymed for over five months.

They handed me the mic, and I just rhymed sets of words. For example “It’s a matter of time, for I splatter with rhymes, like tasting a lime…” and so on- stream-of-consciousness shit. After a few stanzas of this, the words just became straight gibberish, like “Patter me zyne, a hatter see dime, latter me byme”. My mind just spun out and went its own crazy ways. When the minute was up, I heard a very loud chorus of boos, along with maybe a smattering of sympathy applause. However, RollerKingdom and his friends were laughing their asses off, loving every second of ME making an ass out of myself.

After every contestant had gone up, it was up to the crowd to decide who was to move on to the battle. When it was my turn to rile up the crowd in my favor, I just walked up to center stage and took a bow. More boos all around. But to my amazement, when the contestants were announced, I was one of them! “Could this be happening?” I thought. “Is this for real? Am I really gonna battle some fucker in front of 700 people?”

There was a short interlude in between this announcement and the battle, during which I kept thinking of other words to rhyme and just stood in utter disbelief that I was chosen. But as the freestyle contest emcee, a Mekhi Phifer-ass black dude, came up to announce the who would be battling who, he had a change of heart.

“Before we begin, I have an announcement. Ladies and gentleman, we have made a mistake. Upon further review, Scottydukes will NOT be moving on to the next round. Sorry dawg.” Laughter and more boos all around. And I listened hard, but there was no sympathy applause. Not even a smattering.

Although it was anything but unceremonius, this was the bitter end to my bid for rap supremacy. To be singled out in front of a full auditorium of people and told “We made a mistake, you’re just not good enough”- just thinking about it makes me shudder with bitterness to this day. What an ending to another disappointing and unfruitful chapter in my life. I keep dreaming of a fruitful chapter, but the way this world turns it will most likely stay a dream.